Chris Lombardi puts defense and security under the spotlight, as he shares his takes on recent NATO and EU cooperation and provides insight into the company’s own long-term strategic partnerships in Europe.

Three trends are currently driving the global electricity sector: decarbonization, decentralization and differentiation. Utilities are making significant contributions to mitigate carbon emissions, while a technology revolution is …

PROFILE – Arafat’s EU apostle: Chawki Armali

It was Yasser Arafat – with a dramatic message. Israeli troops were leading a fierce onslaught against the Palestinian leader’s headquarters in Ramallah. The EU should be urgently alerted.

By nightfall, the forces had overpowered Arafat’s security guards, confining him to a single storey in his presidential compound. And Arab Christian Chawki Armali – Arafat’s Brussels representative – had abandoned all hope of a relaxing Easter.

To a passerby, the serenity of Brussels’ Rue Franklin, where Armali is based, would seem a world away from the tension of the West Bank.

But you are reminded of the connections as soon as you enter the red-brick maison de maître hosting the Palestinian delegation general. Built as a bourgeois residence in the early decades of the 20th century, it is today decorated with photos of an ebullient Arafat and maps demarcating the ‘promised land’, Palestine.

A diminutive 65-year-old, Armali remains calm as the three phones in his office buzz incessantly. On Monday, he was busily briefing his contacts about that afternoon’s meeting of the EU’s general affairs council in Luxembourg. One minute he was speaking to a man called Jacques about Belgium’s Foreign Minister Louis Michel; the next taking a call from Nabil Shaath, international cooperational minister in the Palestinian Authority. The meagre resources at Armali’s disposal provide him with only one assistant, so he does the work most diplomats can delegate.

He has only spoken once to Arafat since that Good Friday dawn. Instead he has made do with messages relayed through the leader’s cohorts. Another important source of information is a Belgo-Palestinian student, one of 40 peace protesters who have defied the bombardment by staying inside the Ramallah HQ. “They are wonderful and courageous people,” he says.

He has no confidence in any assurances from Ariel Sharon’s government that it has no intention to harm or kill Arafat. During the first two days of the West Bank offensive, numerous buildings in his environs were razed. There have been reports too that Sharon had been reluctant to give cabinet colleagues a pledge that Arafat wouldn’t be targeted.

“I always ask about Mr Arafat’s morale, which is very high,” adds Armali. “He is following everything and giving instructions on political and administrative things. But there is no doubt that he is under stress from the cannons outside.”

Armali’s Catholicism may come as a surprise to those who regard the Arab-Israeli conflict as a purely Muslim versus Jew affair. Yet one frequently overlooked fact about the Palestinians is that at least 10 percent of them bear allegiance to the poor Nazarene, who once lived and preached on the sites of recent carnage. “We have a secular government,” he says. “Mr Arafat is one of the most open and tolerant people.”

A photograph of Armali beside an ailing Pope John Paul II has pride of place on his mantelpiece. The two met last summer. “He [the Pope] is one of the biggest minds of the last century. And he’s always very concerned [about the Middle East].”

Like some of the Pontiff’s most devout followers, Armali feels he has a vocation. His cause, though, isn’t the Vatican. It is Palestine.

Chawki Armali was born in November 1936. He spent his formative years in Shefaram, a town on the plain of Galilee, near Haifa. Whenever he has contacts with people from that area, they want to know if he is related to Zahi Armeli, Israel’s top goal-scorer in the 1987-88 season. The former Maccabi Haifa dynamo is a cousin. “He was like [English soccer internationals] David Beckham or Michael Owen in his day,” chirps Armali.

Graduating with a law degree from Beirut’s Jesuit-run St Joseph’s University in the early 1960s, Armali quickly put his new qualification to use as a legal adviser with the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

He moved to Europe in 1974 and has been on the continent ever since. First he was based in Geneva, where he knocked on the doors of United Nations offices, badgering their staff to take greater heed of what was happening in the Occupied Territories. There he took particular interest in the work of the UN Commission on Human Rights, supplying it with details about the oppression endured by his people.

In 1980-84, he was the PLO’s ‘diplomatic representative’ in Athens. He then moved to Brussels, to lobby the EU. After the formation of the Palestinian Authority in the early 1990s, he was conferred with his current title of delegate general to the EU.

Unfailingly polite, Armali has impressed EU officials and MEPs with his calm and consistent appeals for help.

Even Harry Kney-Tal, Israel’s EU ambassador, describes him as a “warm person”. The pair have accepted invitations to appear together at various events – just a few weeks ago, they shared a platform at a conference on building links between Israeli and Palestinian businesses.

Kney-Tal qualifies his remarks by arguing Armali is somewhat out of synch with the West Bank leadership, whom Sharon has accused of sponsoring suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. “Mr Armali is personally more moderate than the leadership. He is deeply loyal to the Palestinian national idea. But I’m sure he felt much more comfortable when Israelis and Palestinians sat around a table, rather than now when the Palestinian Authority is heavily involved in terrorism.”

Predictably, Armali turns the spotlight back to the recent Israeli outrages, which have left more than 500 Palestinians dead in the space of a few weeks. He wants an international inquiry into reports that humanitarian aid staff have been impeded, sometimes violently, from working and particularly into how they have been prevented from gaining access to the Jenin refugee camp. He also wants the EU to suspend its association agreement with Israel.

For weeks after the 11 September atrocities, a Belgian squad car was constantly parked outside Armali’s office. The police still make regular checks on the building.

Although he has received several threatening letters and phone calls, his scariest moment since moving to Brussels came in the affluent commune of Uccle in December 1997. Three assailants knocked him to the ground before stealing his car. He has no grounds to believe the crime was politically-motivated; instead it was probably part of the ‘carjacking’ phenomenon which has plagued the Belgian capital in recent years.

A divorcee, Armali has a 21-year-old daughter, who is studying commerce in Brussels. His job is unenviable but he unwinds by socialising with a wide circle of friends. “I am a lover of life,” he says.

Cinema is his main passion and he regrets that the increased workload brought about by recent events has meant he’s only caught one movie in the past month – A Beautiful Mind, starring Russell Crowe. His film tastes are eclectic; he enjoys action movies but prefers ones with a social dimension. And although he feels modern American and French cinema has produced some gems, he harks back to a golden era to pick his all-time favourite actors: Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum and Humphrey Bogart (to whom he pays homage by smoking heavily).

It is almost two years since Armali last visited the Occupied Territories. He has ruled out another trip there so long as the bloodshed continues unabated: “I do not want to face all the barrage of soldiers and checkpoints.”

It may be some time before that visit as he is not optimistic that peace can be achieved. One major concern is that the more conciliatory members of Sharon’s ruling coalition, such as Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, may jump ship and be replaced by right-wing ultra-nationalists.

“The most important thing now is that we prepare for any future negotiations,” he says. “But first we need the Israeli government to retreat [from areas under official Palestinian control]. Until that happens, we can do nothing.”